The word "rewilding" became an essential part of talk among conservationists in the late 1990s when two well-known conservation biologists, Michael Soulé and Reed Noss, wrote a now classic paper called "Rewilding and biodiversity: Complementary Goals for Continental Conservation."

Serious debates have begun over what were once considered fringe ideas, such as dumping iron into the ocean to promote algal blooms that suck up carbon dioxide or even North American "rewilding" - the reintroduction of large mammals, such as cheetahs and camels, that disappeared from the continent about 13,000 years ago.

Some of England's most endangered species could be brought back from the brink of extinction as the result of a year-long government wildlife review to be launched tomorrow, which will focus on "rewilding" - returning land to its natural state - and extending habitats.

One of the first Chinese Tigers sent to South Africa in 2003 for the historical "rewilding" (word coined by our strategist Gus Van Dyk-former Carnivore Manager at Pilansburg National Park) training is named "Cathay" after Cathay Pacific who sponsored the transportation.

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Europeans ate their way through the island nation of Mauritius, most famously eliminating the dodo bird by 1700. Less well known was their effect on the Mauritian island now known as Ile aux Aigrettes, where they exterminated giant skinks and tortoises and logged the native ebony trees for firewood.In 1965 the largely denuded 25 hectares of the island were declared a nature reserve. But even in the absence of logging, the slow-growing ebony forests failed to thrive. Why? Because they had lost the animals that ate their fruit and dispersed their seeds. So in 2000 scientists relocated four giant tortoises from the nearby Aldabra atoll in the Seychelles, and by 2009 a total of 19 such introduced tortoises roamed the island, eating the large fruits and leaving behind more than 500 dense patches of seedlings....For this tiny island, at least, rewilding appears to have worked. And that holds out hope for other restoration ecology projects in the midst of the sixth mass extinction in the earth’s history. – Scientific American, July 2011, p. 16

"Greene and a number of other highly eminent ecologists and conservationists have authored a paper, published in the latest issue of Nature (Vol. 436, No. 7053), advocating the establishment of vast ecological history parks with large mammals, mostly from Africa, that are close relatives or counterparts to extinct Pleistocene-period animals that once roamed the Great Plains. The plan, which is called Pleistocene rewilding and is intended to be a proactive approach to conservation, would help revitalize ecosystems that have been compromised by the extinction of many of the continent's large mammals, many of them predators."- Krishna Ramanujan, Cornell conservationists propose allowing wild animals to roam parts of North America, cornell.edu, 17 August 2005.